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I've had some very basic but always interesting gigs from just being the wrong band for the wrong crowd, which is all this is. Rock bands mixed in with pop acts, or being a rock band mixed in with a ton of hip-hop acts. It all just comes down to The Blues Brothers.

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Reminds me of the time in college that our top 40 band was hired to play a Debutant gig (high society). They hired us based on tapes and marketing at the time, but when we showed, they wanted us to play all Carolina Beach music (sort of 50's meets 60's "under the boardwalk" stuff).
We had NONE in our arsenal of songs.
As the crowd got drunker, the gig got worse.

One of those nights you like to forget. Oh, and on the fifth floor of a building without an elevator.

No quick escape!

D

Keeping the Harmony at Harmony Central

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I haven't thought about this in years....but when I was in high school (circa 1985-86) my band was contacted by a guy who worked for a local radio station and was promoting a new battle of the bands; apparently he'd heard us at another BOTB a few months earlier and wanted us to play. It was going to be at the local convention center, and the event would be headlined with a performance by an up-and-coming national artist, so the promoter expected a pretty strong turnout. As a typical high school rock band, we jumped at the opportunity, no questions asked.

We get to the gig and discover that they did indeed have a good turnout for the event....probably 500+ people. And we're literally the only white folks in the place.

It turns out that this wasn't so much a battle of the bands, but a battle of local rappers, rapping over their own pre-recorded tracks. The headliner was an up-and-coming rapper named MC Chill. We were literally the only live band there.....and we were a bunch of high-school kids playing hair metal covers. We had no idea what to expect, and we were pretty nervous....but we said, "Hell....we're already here, and our gear is already set up. Screw it....let's just go out there and play."

It actually went pretty well. The crowd was mostly black kids in their teens and early twenties, and even though they weren't familiar with our material, they were still very energetic and supportive....jumping around and rocking out on air guitars and such, and cheering loudly after every song. I'm sure a lot of it was simply the novelty factor of white kids playing hard rock/metal at a rap concert....but afterward, we had tons of people coming up and telling us how much they enjoyed it. And apparently a lot of them meant it; out of the dozen or so "bands" that performed, we placed second.

I've played a number of "fish out of water" gigs over the years, and seen my share of gigs where the band was out of its element and totally wrong for the situation....but that one gig in high school was the only time I've ever experienced anything like *that*. Fortunately, nobody gave us any friction at all about it, and everyone ended up having a good time.